Thursday, June 09, 2005

Of Beavers and Things Tiny

This afternoon, I was sitting in the tiny park across the street from my tiny apartment, oscillating on the tiny swing, a tiny canned coffee beside me with tiny sand barnacles clinging to it. I was only a tiny way in to my book, and the tiny pigeon steps were initiating a tiny percussion performance beside the only-moderately tiny sandbox.

I was just reading the sentence: “He would've reached out and stroked her beaver, I'm fucking sure of it, except that only Barry would have noticed,” when a tiny old Japanese grandma, whose tiny vertebrae aligned themselves at a 90% angle to her tiny legs, started talking to my not-so-tiny, white shoulder.

Even if I could have understood her Japanese (which imitated, in a tiny way, the language spoken by a rice field at dusk), I just couldn't concentrate. I was completely overcome by the polar opposite of tiny embarrassment.

I mean, who did I think I was?! Sitting there, reading about beavers being caressed (and subconsciously fantasizing about my own beaver gnawing on a tree trunk) in the presence of such a kind, wise elder (albeit slightly impaired in the realms of articulation and height)?

But I couldn't let grandma read the last sentence from my book through my eyes, so I bowed my head and told her I would love to visit her family for dinner.

(Oh, man! I think I misplaced my sarcasm today!! If you come across it, please return it to me immediately. You can spot it by its tiny, glittery beads on its tiny, pink toe nails.)